America Getting Very Serious About Premier League

There was a press conference last Tuesday in New City at 30 Rockefeller Center (30 Rock), where NBC Sports unveiled their Premier League plans for next season.

Richard Scudamore – as good as it gets
They beat out ESPN (part of ABC – which is part of the Disney Empire) for the right to broadcast the games in a $250M bid, and they see this as a great way to improve their brand worldwide, since the Premier League is broadcast in lots and lots of countries around the world.

Premier League CEO Richard Scudamore attended the announcement, and NBC will show, for the first time ever, all 380 EPL games live next season, and they have hired various English announcers.

NBC Sports are going to have Match of the Day on Saturday nights (sound familiar?), and it will be repeated on Sunday mornings.

There will be a Match of the Week also broadcast on Sunday nights, and it’s a showing of the best game of the Premier League weekend – so we should see Newcastle on that show a lot next season.

Arlo White, formerly of the BBC, is the lead play-by-play commentator, and he will cover over 75 matches during the season.

And former Chelsea and England defender Graeme Le Saux and former Arsenal and England defender Lee Dixon will provide analysis – the color commentary as it’s called over here.

Rebecca Lowe, who is English and used to work at ESPN in the US, will become the NBC Sports’ studio host.

And of course NBC Sports outbid ESPN for the right to broadcast the games in the Premier League for the next three seasons.

England international Gary Lineker is to become a special contributor (whatever that means) and he will continue to be located in England, where he hosts Match of the Day for the BBC.

More money for Gary, but no word on Alan Shearer being part of the NBC package.

This is what Scudamore said at the meeting last week:

“We thought we’d taken this league around the world to some levels, but this is just about as good as it gets,”

“Yes there might be 1.2 billion people in China, there might be 1.3 billion people in India… but nowhere, nowhere, do they consume sports like they do here in the U.S.”

Fox Sports, with former Newcastle right-back Warren Barton as the lead analyst – he’s a great ambassador for Newcastle United over here – will continue to broadcast games for Fox Sports next season.

Note: We are trying to assist in a study on Newcastle United today – and an online survey is being conducted on Premier League teams for academic research purposes by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Technical University Munich – it will last approximately 10 minutes. Please take th study if you can – it’s confidential. Here it is.

On that Mirror article, I read it this morning, he misses out a lot of things which can only really be seen consistently every match game and glosses over other stuff. I tweeted him back a few tweets with some key points he missed

Plus, Moyes is not Pardew, Pardew is not Moyes. Pardew is his CV, Moyes is his CV. However, Finkle IS Einhorn…

Charlie from previous
The blog has been an absolute nightmare for Ads and diverting you to other sights etc the last couple of days, hope Ed sorts it out soon it’s making the blog hard work to use not to mention its as annoying as anything!

It would have been funny to see 5under1and go down this season and see them get left behind financially with this mega deal next season ???? also about the new strip. I like how it’s more black than white but for god sake you can get that black cat off it or change it to white or gold somehow.

You’re perfectly entitled to disagree. There’d been a game a few weeks earlier, where most of my mates (sitting at various points around SJP) said he’d had a good game and I thought he’d had an absolute shocker.

Desperate for Villa to go down. Benteke would be a success here (similar to Ba). Benteke and Remy are the players we need. Cisse, Gouffran, Remy and Benteke would be good enough for next season. Hopefully Wigan can get a result against Spurs.

Ibiza. Sorry I never replied yesterday mate but that sums up my time management at the minute :-). I still read the articles but am struggling with joining in the convos. In fact I’m off into a meeting in 5 minutes haha.

estechco
Very true mate, I just have higher expectations from tiote than some of the other lads because I know what he’s capable of playing like on top form, just feel he’s let us down massively this season

I’ve managed to block a large proportion of the ads by adding lines into my hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc or similar on a Windows machine). Not trivial or for those on Android/Apple products, but works a treat!

I live in the States where I can watch more EPL than I could if I lived at home. The days of my sister sending me VHS tapes of games and listening to games on shortwave radio is long gone but those were good days, still love listening to games on the radio. TV commentary here is not great when you listen to US commentators but I tune them out.
Howay the Lads!!

In honor of two dedicated Newcastle fans, who lost their lives supporting Newcastle United, when their passenger jet was shot down over Ukraine on Thursday July 17th, 2014 by rebels, as they were traveling to support the team in New Zealand.

We will never forget them.

Fantasy League

Mark Harding has again set up the Fantasy League for our readers for this season.

The new code is 3641-1656 and people can set up the league here:

http://fantasy.premierleague.com

====================

Health Update - 4 Feb, 2015

I had another battery of medical tests early last week, and the results show my PSA count as undetectable, which means the prostate cancer is still under control, and there is no trace of cancer in the body.

I'm very pleased about that!

Ed Harrison

=========================

What Is A Football Club?

“What is a club in any case?"

“Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it.

It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes."

“It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city."

“It’s a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.”